Word: merchantmen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Roving U.S. submarines returned to their bases with word that they had sunk two Japanese merchantmen and a transport in mid-Pacific and a big Japanese merchantman off the occupied Aleutians. The U.S. submarine score to date: 60 Jap merchantmen and naval ships sunk, 31 probably damaged...
...Then there Were ...? In today's sea & air fleets, the most important ship is the aircraft carrier. Nobody knows exactly how many carriers Japan had when the war started. Best guess: nine regular carriers, plus ten or more converted merchantmen, which are not so effective as carriers built for the job. Of her regular carriers, Japan has certainly lost four, plus three laid up for repairs. She probably lost six, and she may have lost seven...
...moment, Japan's converted merchantmen may help to redress the balance of carrier power. But the U.S. is rapidly converting merchant ships into carriers; it is pushing a big program of regular carriers (eleven had been announced up to Dec. 7). And it is doing even more. Last fortnight, Rhode Island's Senator Peter Gerry put on the public record a hopeful and hitherto secret fact about U.S. carrier construction: "The Navy is converting to aircraft carriers a number of ships planned as cruisers. . . . You can imagine what will happen to the rest of the Japanese fleet when...
...when the enemy turned around. Unlike the Battle of Java, where Allied naval forces potted Jap merchantmen, were themselves knocked off by Jap warcraft, the fighters in the Coral Sea concentrated on the enemy's warcraft. They were at it until Saturday night...
...Time for Rejoicing. The Jap had taken a shattering defeat. The Navy listed his losses: sunk, one aircraft carrier, one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, two destroyers, one seaplane tender, four gunboats, two submarines, three supply vessels; damaged, a carrier, heavy cruiser, light cruiser, seaplane tender, two merchantmen...